Is Christianity just a bunch of rules for how to live?

From Gospel Translations

The following is an edited transcript of the audio.

Is Christianity just a bunch of rules for how to live?

I suppose there is an element in religion of telling people how to live, but it isn't men telling people how to live. It is God telling people how to get right with him.

Christianity is not first and foremost a religion. It is first and foremost news. It's news.

It's like we're in a war, in a concentration camp, and suddenly you're hearing on the smuggled-in radio that the troops of deliverance have landed in helicopters five miles away. They're conquering everything in their path and they're just about to get to the gate and open the doors. And having lived all your life in this concentration camp, you're now going to be set free.

That's Christianity. It's news that God sent rescue troops into the world, namely Jesus Christ, and that at great cost to himself he has conquered our enemy the Devil, opened the gates of the concentration camp, and welcomed us home. And then you add the beautiful image of bride and bridegroom and realize that this is not just a soldier who simply frees you go and do what want to do. He's your husband, as it were, who has been separated from you for years and years, and you're the wife who has been in the camp. And when the gates are opened there he stands on the other side, and the kinds of affections are huge.

I remember watching at the end of the Vietnam war some of those magnificent videos of men who had been away from their wives, some of them I think up to five years. I remember watching them run toward each other and seeing them sweep their wives off their feet. My heart leapt and my tears flowed when I watched that kind of reunion.

So when I think about what is missing from the average person's picture of Christianity, I want to show them that there is such a freedom that is offered us because of what Jesus Christ did to die for our sins, and such a sweet reunion with the one for whom we were made.

I just hope by my ministry and by God's grace through other people's ministries we could take away these false assumptions of what Christianity is and help people see the beauty of what it really is.